Wordle is 2022's top Google search term, above both Ukraine and the queen
Wordle was the most-searched term on Google search in 2022, both in the United States and across the world, according to the Google Trends Year in Search roundup.
The game beat out terms like "election results" and "Jeffrey Dahmer" in the United States (the 2nd and 10th most popular terms, respectively) and "Ukraine" and "Queen Elizabeth" globally (3rd and 4th).
"This really became a shared obsession for everyone, and you can see that in the data," Simon Rogers, trends data team lead at Google, told The Washington Post.
Wordle is a daily vocabulary game, similar to Jotto or Mastermind, in which users are given six guesses to figure out the word of the day.
* The New York Times is finally making changes to Wordle * What the Wordle? Guys, Hilary Barry has been secretly trolling us all year with Wordle * Study shows many users are cheating at Wordle
All players get the same word (which is determined by an editor at the New York Times) and can play only once per day.
The game became a viral hit in late 2021 after players started sharing cryptic emoji square arrangements along with a snippet of text (usually the word Wordle, followed by the number of the puzzle) on social media, prompting others to ask: "What's Wordle?"
On January 31, the New York Times Company purchased Wordle from its original developer, the programmer Josh Wardle, for an undisclosed "low-seven figure" sum.
Readers dismayed to learn that Wordle outperformed other, more grave subjects on Google search can take solace in the fact that its placement at the top of the list came from people searching the term year-round.
A Trends comparison of the terms Wordle, Queen Elizabeth II and Ukraine shows higher average interest in Wordle throughout the year, but also
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